COBOL Job Trends in the West Midlands

COBOL
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring COBOL skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 - 227
Rank change year-on-year - - -7
Permanent jobs citing COBOL 3 0 14
As % of all permanent jobs in the West Midlands 0.037% - 0.19%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.30% - 0.88%
Number of salaries quoted 2 0 14
10th Percentile - - £57,448
25th Percentile - - £62,163
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 - £73,805
75th Percentile - - £82,666
90th Percentile - - £84,964
England median annual salary £55,000 £80,000 £73,805
% change year-on-year -31.25% +8.39% +17.15%

All Programming Languages
West Midlands

COBOL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring coding skills in the West Midlands.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 1,000 802 1,600
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the West Midlands 12.25% 23.77% 22.23%
Number of salaries quoted 748 637 1,267
10th Percentile £36,250 £32,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £46,104 £42,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +3.77% -3.64%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £76,250 £77,500
England median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +8.33% -7.69%

COBOL
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing COBOL relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

COBOL job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

COBOL
Salary Trend in the West Midlands

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing COBOL.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing COBOL

COBOL
Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing COBOL within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 24 July 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Birmingham - 3 £55,000 - 1
COBOL
England

COBOL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Cloud Services
1 1 (33.33%) Azure
1 1 (33.33%) Azure DevOps
1 1 (33.33%) GitHub
1 1 (33.33%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (33.33%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 1 (33.33%) Jenkins
General
1 1 (33.33%) Analytical Skills
1 1 (33.33%) Finance
1 1 (33.33%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 2 (66.67%) Software Engineer
2 1 (33.33%) Applications Consultant
2 1 (33.33%) Consultant
2 1 (33.33%) Mainframe Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (33.33%) .NET
1 1 (33.33%) ISPF
1 1 (33.33%) Spring
1 1 (33.33%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 1 (33.33%) Enterprise Software
1 1 (33.33%) Legacy Applications
1 1 (33.33%) Mainframe
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (66.67%) Software Engineering
2 1 (33.33%) Batch Processing
2 1 (33.33%) Business Development
2 1 (33.33%) CI/CD
2 1 (33.33%) Collaborative Culture
2 1 (33.33%) DevOps
2 1 (33.33%) Performance Tuning
2 1 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (33.33%) Re-Platforming
2 1 (33.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
2 1 (33.33%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1 (33.33%) Java
1 1 (33.33%) JCL
Vendors
1 1 (33.33%) Broadcom